


Friends don't let friends drink paint.

by chrundletheokay



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Substance Abuse, [sol from ''grace and frankie'' voice] homosexual business and bed partners with each other in life, in business and in life, is mac going soft in his old age or am i?, mixed with Charlie being gross, plus brief mentions of Denins's disordered eating sorry, they are partners. all three of them., they are... more than friends, title is tongue-in-cheek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrundletheokay/pseuds/chrundletheokay
Summary: Charlie shifts his weight from one foot to the other. That’s when Mac notices he’s holding something behind his back; Mac is afraid to find out what. “It’s like—” Charlie shoves the mystery item into Mac’s chest. “This is for you.”[or charmacden on mixed drinks, bear traps, boundaries, and (not) drinking paint]
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	Friends don't let friends drink paint.

**Author's Note:**

> TW nothing too out of the ordinary for canon:
> 
> — Charlie drinking paint  
> — a few references to Dennis's disordered eating  
> — "Charlie's Home Alone" references (in case that grossed you out as much as it did me)  
> — mentions of consent, vis a vis paint-drinking*
> 
> *can't believe I just typed that.

At the sound of a door opening, Mac’s heart skips a beat with nerves. He’s watching the bar while Dennis grabs a coffee, and is praying hard that no one orders a mixed drink. Nothing more complicated than a beer; _please, God._ Thankfully, it’s not a customer coming through the front door, about to demand a Manhattan or a Mojito or a Margarita or a Martini. It’s just Charlie, emerging from the basement.

Although Mac didn’t notice him slip away, he realizes now he hasn’t seen Charlie in a while. That’s hardly unusual, though. Charlie has a list of his Charlie Work, and they generally leave him to wander around and tend to it as he pleases. Of course, this does lead to unforeseen and less-than-ideal outcomes — often involving Charlie getting high on potentially toxic substances.

Based on Charlie’s body language as he approaches the bar, it seems reasonable to assume that’s what happened. He’s avoiding eye contact, his eyes trailing aimlessly along the sticky surface of the bar. He clears his throat.

“Yeah, so, uh,” he begins.

Mac waits.

Nothing.

He prompts Charlie with a forced smile and a cheerful, “What’s up?”

Charlie shifts his weight from one foot to the other. That’s when Mac notices he’s holding something behind his back; Mac is afraid to find out what.

“It’s like—” Charlie shoves the mystery item into Mac’s chest. “This is for you.”

“Uh,” Mac says eloquently. It’s a can of paint — rather full, judging by the weight of it. Teal, based on the dried streaks running from around the rim and down the sides of the can.

Mac didn’t ask for paint. He has no use for it. As far as he knows, Charlie doesn’t have any paint-related projects assigned, either, and hasn’t in ages. Although, come to think of it, someone should paint over that nasty note Cricket left on the bathroom wall.

“You said—You and Dennis—Like, I’m not supposed to—” Charlie clenches his jaw and makes a hoarse, frustrated noise at the back of his throat. A muted scream, like he’s irritated with himself for not being able to properly verbalize what’s on his mind. “I mean, I know you don’t like when I, y’know. With the paint, and the drinking. So I thought… Anyway.”

It’s true; they’d had a talk several month back, at Mac’s insistence. Dennis had hated it, although he reluctantly admitted afterward that he could see the benefit. Charlie had been visibly uncomfortable, bouncing his legs up and down on their sofa and wringing his hands. Still, Mac likes to think Charlie is grateful, now that the awkward conversation is over, and the expectations and boundaries are clear.

It seemed best to preempt conflict by talking things over, even if doing so meant temporarily irritating both his partners. In the long run, Mac was sure it would pay off. Charlie struggles with nuance and subtlety; he hadn't even gotten that Dennis was hitting on him at first. He'd practically needed it spelled out for him. Admittedly, Mac also occasionally needs things stated in plain English — rather than communicated through a series of passive-aggressive, self-destructive behaviors, the way Dennis tends to do. On top of all that, someone was bound to get jealous eventually. So why not make a plan for how to deal with all that shit, _before_ it came up?

Part of their conversation included setting boundaries around Charlies’ more... _interesting_ drugs of choice. Paint, mainly. This, then, led to a series of pointed questions on Charlie's part. For example: “How is me drinking paint any different than you drinking beer?” (In short: "You drink beer, too; you know exactly how it’s different.") And “If Dennis is allowed to starve himself, how come I’m not allowed to huff paint?” (Answer: “We’re working on it.”)

Sure, there had been a few slip-ups since they put those boundaries in place — with Charlie and his paint, as well as Dennis and his “food stuff.” However, that was to-be-expected. Charlie just didn’t come over those nights. It wasn’t like they were punishing him; it was—

Well, it was _a little_ bit like that.

The kid needed to face consequences for his actions. If it were anyone else, those repercussions would include getting violently ill or — God forbid — dying. But Charlie is practically indestructible. Miraculously, the paint has never seemed to cause permanent damage, or to do much beyond make Charlie out-of-his-mind high. But that just meant he needed an external force motivating him not to drink paint. Because as far as Mac could tell, the kid had literally no impulse control.

Charlie's last slip-up had been several weeks prior. Maybe a month? In spite of their lengthy discussion, he’d attempted to come home with them, still high and covered in paint.

_“Charlie, what did we say about the paint,” Dennis demanded. He pushed Charlie away with a hand to his chest as Charlie attempted to climb into the trunk of the Range Rover._

_Charlie blinked heavily. His head lolled to one side, as if it was too heavy for him to keep upright. “Tastes like blueberry.”_

_“No. We had an agreement, remember?”_

_“We said—” Charlie furrowed his brow in deep concentration. “No drinking paint. No, ‘cause you can’t… con-consign. Er, constant—constance… Constantinople. Yeah; can't Constantinople on paint. Too high. S'good, man.”_

_“It's_ consent, _dude,” Mac supplied_. _“Jesus Christ, you're a mess.”_

_"You're not coming home with us," Dennis shrieked._

_“But check this out.” Charlie licked at a glob of paint along his lower lip, saliva mixing with the teal pigment and dripping into his beard. “I don’t even wanna bang. I was just gonna sleep on your couch. Sleep, and not pee. ‘Cause you don’t like that, neither. Plus, in the morning, I was gonna make waffles. 'Cause Dennis has to eat if I’m not s'posed to drink paint.”_

_Mac shook his head, incredulous. “Go home, Charlie,” he ordered, firmly but gently._

“So this is for me to hold onto,” Mac clarifies. He sets the paint can down in front of him on the bar. It’s definitely not sanitary, but neither is anything else in this place.

Charlie fidgets with a cheap coaster, a promotional item from some local hipster brewery. “Yeah,” he rasps, folding the coaster in half and creasing it down the middle. “Or you can keep it, or whatever. Or throw it out; it doesn’t matter.”

Mac examines his face closely. His initial assessment might have been wrong. There’s no paint visible anywhere on Charlie's face, and he doesn’t _seem_ high. The fidgeting and poor eye contact likely isn’t guilt over drinking paint, but rather anxiety about giving away his precious stash. Either that, or it's simply Charlie being Charlie.

“You drink any of it,” Mac asks, just to be certain.

Charlie shakes his head. “No.”

“You promise?”

Charlie opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to demonstrate: it’s a normal, healthy pink, not discolored by a thick layer of paint.

“You really didn’t," Mac says. “Alright. Wow.”

“No,” Charlie confirms emphatically. He tears the coaster in half, then tears the two pieces in half again. “I haven’t since, like... That time, remember? Dennis pushed me out his car, and Frank and I went home singing the Constantinople song. Since then.”

“Okay, well, he didn’t push you out of his car. You were high, and a mess, and," Mac trails off. "But, I mean. Shit, Charlie, that’s been—”

Yeah, almost a month now. This must be the rest of the can from that time. Before that slip-up, it’d been a while since Charlie's last run-in with paint; Mac can't even remember when. And now Charlie is giving away the rest of the can so he doesn’t drink any more. Sure, he can easily go out and shoplift another can, but the symbolism— And that he’s trusting Mac with it—

Mac could just cry. It’s a low bar, perhaps — _don’t ingest toxic substances_ — and maybe Mac shouldn’t be proud, but he is.

“It’s good, right? It’s okay?” Charlie's voice is uncertain. He's clearly looking for validation. He’s tearing up the bits of mangled coaster into even tinier pieces now. “I mean, it’s not weird that I gave it to you?”

“No. It’s not weird. It’s good. Really, really good.” Mac makes his way around the bar, twines his fingers through Charlie’s, and leans close to murmur in his ear. “C’mere.”

“Why?”

Mac pulls him gently, leading him toward the back office. “I wanna show you something.”

Charlie follows willingly. He won’t want to do this in front of people, and Mac’s fine with that. If Mac gets to set boundaries like “I don’t want to be with you when you’re drinking paint,” Charlie gets to set ones like “I don’t like PDA; that shit’s gross and awkward, for everyone involved.”

“What?” Charlie says when Mac has closed the office door behind them.

“Nothing. I’m just—” Mac shakes his head. Is it weird and condescending to say _I’m really proud of you?_ It feels like it might be. “You’re doing a really good job, dude.” _Fuck it._ “I’m really proud of you.”

“Even though I—‘Cause I still kept it, you know. And I wanted to—I mean, I went down there to drink it," Charlie stammers. "But then I was all, like, arguing with myself about it. Like, ‘it’s stupid, don’t drink the paint.’ And, ‘dude, just drink the paint.’” He paces around the office as he rambles. There isn’t enough room in here for effective, satisfactory pacing; Mac has tried. Watching Charlie do it is anxiety-provoking, as if Charlie's emotions are filling up the tiny room and rubbing off onto Mac, for lack of anywhere else to go.

He catches Charlie with a hand at his wrist, then interlocks their fingers again. The contact is enough to get Charlie to pause for breath. It gets him to stop pacing. Mac immediately feels the anxiety in his own chest dissipate. “But you didn’t," he reminds Charlie. “See?”

“No, I didn’t, did I?” Charlie sounds faintly pleased with himself.

Mac takes a step closer and puts the palm of his hand to Charlie’s cheek. “You’re doing such a good job, Charlie.”

“I still kinda wanna drink the paint, though,” Charlie mutters.

Mac hums. “Really? ‘Cause I feel like I can think of better things to do.”

He leans in closer, giving Charlie a long moment to process his intentions — giving him a chance to pull away — before he presses their lips together. Unwanted experience has taught Mac what paint tastes like; but when Charlie slips his tongue past Mac’s lips, there’s nothing but the faint taste of beer and peanuts. Mac sighs in contentment. Charlie pulls back with a slight grin on his face, self-satisfied.

"Such a good boy," Mac murmurs. "I love you; you know that, right?"

Charlie practically vibrates with joy. He pretends not to give a shit what people think, but he secretly loves the praise. "Course I do. You tell me that all the—"

Before they can get any further, the door is thrown open, revealing Dennis’s frowning face. “Hey, asshole,” he snaps. “Did you leave a paint can to watch the bar?”

“Uh,” Mac answers. In retrospect, he _did_ abandon the bar. And he _did_ leave that paint can sitting on the bar, right where he’d been standing, praying and pretending to tend bar himself. But it’s not as if he expected an inanimate object to serve drinks.

“No, it’s cool, Dennis. ‘Cause, see, it’s mine,” Charlie explains. “Or at least, it was.”

“Yours,” responds Dennis, whose flat tone of voice clearly communicates that he disagrees with Charlie’s assessment of the situation as “cool.”

“Yeah, but see—” Charlie sticks his tongue out with an _ahhh,_ like he’s at the doctor’s office. “It’s Mac’s now, so that I didn’t drink it. I gave it to Mac so I couldn’t—And then he was all, ‘Wow, Charlie, you’re so sexy for not drinking paint. Lemme take you in the back office and do sexy stuff with you.’”

Dennis shakes his head in disbelief at Charlie’s retelling of the story.

“I left you guys for, like, ten minutes. You seriously can't watch the bar for that long? I just wanted a coffee, that's all.”

Before Mac has a chance to defend himself, Charlie cuts in: “You know, a can of paint may not be able to tend bar, but as far as security systems go… I mean, no one’s getting past that thing.”

“Security system," Dennis echoes.

Mac shouts after his partners as they wander out of the office. “No! Absolutely not! Charlie, the last time you did that, I found you lying unconscious, covered in—” Mac cuts off with a groan, desperately trying not to remember the smell. For months, just thinking about it made him gag. “Dennis, it was _disgusting._ He got his leg caught in a bear trap and everything!”

“A bear trap,” Dennis repeats, his voice high-pitched with enthusiasm. He slides Charlie’s coffee order across the bar: a large drip coffee, plus a puppuccino on the side. “Now, how did you get a hold of a bear trap?”

“Rural janitor supply company,” Charlie answers, matter-of-fact. _(Of course._ Where else?) “On discount. I got ‘em used.”

“They were rusted as shit," Mac protests. "You got tetanus, bro!”

Charlie glowers at him. “I did not. Please, dude. I’ve been vaccinated for tetanus, like, a hundred times. I got infected. But just, like, a tiny bit. I didn’t even go septic, or nothin'.”

Undeterred by the horrid details and Mac's continued protests, Dennis prods Charlie for further information on the bear traps. The two of them spend the rest of the afternoon perched on barstools, talking about Charlie’s Super Bowl security system. At one point, Charlie draws up a schematic of it on a roll of butcher paper, which he spreads out on the bar between them. Mac quickly gives up on intervening. Instead, he hangs out by the front door, watching from a distance, sipping his coffee, and checking the IDs of the few people who wander into Paddy's.

He tries to quell his panic; it may be premature. Sure, the bear traps appeal to Dennis at first glance, but he'll quickly realize what a terrible idea they were (and still are). If not, Mac will convince him with a more detailed retelling of the Super Bowl story. He’ll be sure to include plenty of graphic details about the stench of shit; the dried blood crusted along Charlie’s jeans; the broken bones in his legs; and the way the ER doctors had called in a social worker to speak to Charlie, because there’s no way anyone in their right mind would willingly step back into a bear trap.

If nothing else, the lively discussion on security is keeping Charlie occupied and distracted. When he reaches for the paint can, it’s only to demonstrate its trajectory as it swings from an imaginary rope. He bops Dennis gently on the head with it. Dennis swats it away and slaps Charlie upside the head in retaliation.

A few hours into the discussion Mac startles at Dennis's sudden raised voice. “What kind of moron gets caught in his own trap, Charlie? That’s the first thing you want to avoid," he shouts. "Well, that and the police.”

Charlie is red-faced with indignation. “When the hunter falls prey to his own trap, that’s how you _know_ it’s good! Because that means no one can get through, okay? Did you ever think about that? Huh? Did you? Did you, Dennis?”

_"What?_ " Dennis is taken aback, but something about his tone of voice betrays him. He's actually considering Charlie's insane argument. "Shit," he exhales.

"Yeah," Charlie crows.

Again, Mac doesn’t bother to intervene. This is part of their whole song-and-dance, their… _unique_ dynamic. Between Charlie and Dennis, this is something resembling flirting. Very loud, not at all romantic flirting. He’s seen Dennis use “dipshit” almost as a term of endearment, and Charlie respond by biting him on the lower lip. Mac doesn't exactly understand it, but it's their version of romance. Or part of it, anyway.

By closing time, Mac's suspicions are confirmed: Charlie and Dennis are still talking bullshit, but there seem to be no hard feelings between them. Charlie pushes Dennis out the front door and toward the Range Rover as Mac locks up. The three of them wind up back at Mac and Dennis’s apartment, continuing with their millionth rewatch of the entire _Thunder Gun_ franchise. Tonight is _Thunder Gun Express —_ a classic. It never gets old.

Mac and Dennis huddle together on the couch, with Charlie on the floor at their legs, burrowed under a heavy blanket. Dennis runs his hands through Charlie’s hair, gently untangling the odd knots and snarls as he goes. He counts aloud the gray hairs he finds until Charlie shushes him. Charlie obviously doesn't get that it's teasing. He doesn't give a shit about gray hairs, not the way Dennis does. As far as Charlie is concerned, Dennis probably might as well be counting his eyelashes or his eyebrow hairs. Dennis shakes his head, mildly irritated, but keeps playing with Charlie's hair.

Afterward, when it’s time for bed, Charlie curls up between his partners. He's complained before that Dennis’s room is too big. Too clean. Too organized. He likes to wedge himself in between Mac and Dennis when he sleeps over. Mac likes to imagine he feels safer that way.

Charlie falls fast asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, and snuffles softly in his sleep. And he manages to do it, even without his usual sleeping tonic of cat food, beer, and glue. Mac likes to think that this, too, is about Charlie feeling safer.

In the morning, Charlie is the first one awake. He greets Mac and Dennis in the kitchen with a pot of coffee and a heaping plate full of rainbow sprinkle pancakes. He’s moving and talking a mile a minute, but not because he's high. He's just wired as shit from drinking a ton of coffee while making breakfast.

The three of them crowd around the little kitchen table. Charlie manages to coax Dennis into eating a few pancakes, with only a few complaints on Dennis's part. Mac swallows hard against the lump in his throat as Dennis places the last tiny piece of pancake in his mouth. He refuses to cry over pancakes, but that doesn't mean he can't be proud.

“The sprinkles make it taste better, right,” Charlie asks with a grin. Dennis rolls his eyes and kicks at Charlie’s feet under the table.

After breakfast, they trade maple syrup kisses on the sofa, then talk Charlie into showering. When they're all dressed and ready for work, there’s a leisurely walk in the sun back to the bar, with a stop at the coffee shop along the way. Charlie plucks a bunch of flowers off a tree and tucks them behind Dennis’s ear (after testing one for flavor; because in spite of it all, Charlie is still Charlie). Dennis scrunches his face up as Charlie tucks the flowers through his curls, but doesn’t stop him.

“Look at you — such a pretty boy,” Charlie teases him. Rosy-cheeked and failing to suppress his grin, Dennis laughs quietly and bumps their shoulders together. “I know I am,” he retorts.

All in all, it’s almost too good. Mac can’t imagine how he ever got so lucky.

Still, he thinks he could get used to this. He tells his partners this as Dennis unlocks the front door to Paddy’s.

“You’re going soft in your old age, bro,” Charlie laughs. Dennis agrees, although he posits that Mac was never all that hard to begin with.

Mac eyes the delicate pink flowers still tucked behind Dennis’s ear. “Yeah, maybe,” he agrees. “Maybe.”

Somehow, he doesn’t think he minds.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, I know I still have two chapters to finish editing on my last fic. I hate chapter three right now, so I took a break the other day to write a quick.... uh... 3k+ word fic? Apparently. Somehow this got edited first. #onlygodcanjudge
> 
> yell at me on tumblr @chrundletheokay. or type at regular volume. either way.


End file.
